The comic above is funny to me probably because I watched the original Terminator the other night. I hadn't seen it for a long time, so I had a good laugh at some of the effects, clothing, and hair.

Mostly the hair.

What I found odd, however, while I was watching it was how much the film had these moments of simply not making sense. Whenever the first bits involving the future appeared--and why Sarah Conner actually believes Reece and his story. It was odd, because I knew how the film worked--all the narrative dots could be easily joined by me. However, what I found strange was that I wasn't really joining the dots through the film itself, but through my knowledge of the film in pop culture, and my own experience of it. At one point, I realised that the film itself could be a huge mess of points without any narrative cohesion in it at all, but I'd been so prepared by society about it that I would have no trouble at all in following it if it was my first time watching the flick.

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Since my life is thus far free of mockery, I will say that the first movie had great action and a truly implacable foe; the second movie is mostly great, at least when Arnie is not on screen; and the TV series has some great ideas, presented pretty well.

Parts of the recent movie looked great, if nothing else, and the less said about T3 the better (though I think the car chase is cool, if only because of the technical challenges involved).

Oh, bugger it.

I have been wondering recently about films (and whatnot) that "don't make sense". Where is the tipping point at which this becomes a problem, and why?